Speaking of trying to be a working reporter in Beijing, a few of the 20,000 journalists covering the Olympics have been checking in with us about their Internet access. Perhaps you've heard China is filtering the web?
While The Drudge Report is operational and The Huffington Post is not, we're also told Jossip is A-OK, while MyDD.com is "sometimes available," XTube.com "won't even load," and one fella's "[sister's] blog on Blogger is banned."
Remember when CNN's Jack Cafferty calling the Chinese "thugs" and "goons," spent a week clarifying his statements — he was talking about the government, not the Chinese people — and then, like Sharon Stone, got slapped with a lawsuit wanting more than $1 billion in damages? It was an incident that the cable network hoped would live and die in April. And it should have. But then the Olympics happened, and CNN had to send correspondents to Beijing to, like, cover it and stuff. But while the media may have moved on to more substantial scandals, the Chinese have not. Which is why it sucks to work for CNN while working in China right now. CONTINUED »
Still bitter about losing his wedding ring, media baron and newspaper shaman Rupert Murdoch has suddenly found himself hedging his bets, rather than expanding his empire anywhere you can translate American Idol. While he has no problem doing big business with human rights running joke China and sinking $100 million into India, there is one place he isn't keen on dealing with: the Kremlin. Because they steal! CONTINUED »
From trying to restrict the locations where television networks could broadcast from, to filtering journalists' Internet access, and roughing up Japanese reporters following a supposed terrorist attack, China is making very good on its promise to respect the freedoms enjoyed by the media during other Olympic Games.
Who said John McCain is letting Barack Obama steer the election news cycle? Fine, everybody, but this latest bit of news out of the McCain campaign shows a certain Republican can administer some agenda setting of his own: McCain will spend $6 million on television advertising during the Olympics. Put another way, McCain will foot 0.67 percent of NBC's $894 million payment to broadcast the Olympics. Of course, this announcement comes after Obama already announced he'd be spending $5 million during the Olympics, so McCain is, um, once again letting Obama set the election news cycle. And then trying to one-up him. Of course, this represents both candidates tacitly endorsing the Olympics, NBC's decision to broadcast it, and China's horrendous civil rights record.
Backtracking off previous backtracking, the International Olympic Committee says it never reached a deal with China to permit Internet filtering, and says all along it's insisted there must be unrestricted access to the web just as there was in previous host cities. They're blaming the mix up on a miscommunication; IOC president Jacques Rogge made his statement in English, which isn't his first language. So now that the IOC's position on censorship has been cleared up, where does the media's Internet access stand? CONTINUED »
NBC News staffers have been able to log on to Amnesty International! Despite China's attempts to censor the media's Internet access, the smarties from 30 Rock decided to skip the official Main Press Center and International Broadcast Center, where the competition is set up, and is instead work out of the Beijing International Convention Center. The next place China will install web filtering? The Beijing International Convention Center.
Worth noting, of course, is that NBC is the official broadcaster for the 2008 Olympic Games, so either they got special treatment, or they're waving a big middle finger at the Chinese government after paying $1 billion for TV licensing rights.
South Korea's Seoul Broadcasting System broadcast an exclusive Olympics report yesterday, showing footage of the games' opening ceremony rehearsal. Beijing was not pleased. Like Internet access there, video footage is being highly restricted, despite claims of open press. So when SBS broadcast the footage, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (let's just call it BOCOG, k?) quickly moved to get the clip stripped from any video sharing site. Indeed, multiple versions of the footage have already been yanked off YouTube. But how SBS even obtained the advanced video is still anyone's guess. BOCOG insists it was "obtained through irregular means" and SBS had "not acted in conformance with professional ethics." SBS has a different take. CONTINUED »
The Chinese government has admitted to censoring the media's Internet access at the Beijing Olympics — and the International Olympic Committee decided it's not such a big deal.
When reporters first started noticing they weren't able to access sites "that discuss Tibetan succession, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse," China said the problem had to do with the websites' hosts, not their countrywide filters.
They're done playing that charade, and owning up to the restrictions. CONTINUED »
Olympics reporters in Beijing hoping to sign on to the website of, say, Amnesty International shouldn't even bother; China has blocked it, along with any website relating to "cult" Falun Gong, and perhaps anything else the government deems unacceptable. Not that China is acknowledging it might be filtering the Internet access of the Main Press Centre and International Broadcast Centre, nor the Athletes' and Media Villages, which have opened in advance of the Aug. 8 opening ceremony. All of this has led the International Olympic Committee to begin investigating potential censorship by China, which promised media outlets the same reporting freedoms they enjoyed at previous games. But no matter what the IOC finds, China isn't going to admit it's done anything wrong. Rather, it's the fault of the websites you're all trying to visit — they probably didn't validate their HTML or something! CONTINUED »
So soon after it was announced that racial discrimination has been banned in Hong Kong, an English-language newspaper in Beijing has reported that blacks and other perceived “social undesirables” are unofficially banned from bars during the Olympic Games. The athletes who fit that description will have to save their celebrating until they get home, it seems.
CONTINUED »
So, NBC, how's your plan for broadcasting 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage across your 500 different television properties going? With just 19 days to go, we hear you've sold 90 percent of your ad inventory for the games, but we've been hearing that for awhile now.
Sure, most of your programming time will be a cakewalk: Point the camera at Michael Phelps crotch as he dives into the pool; point the camera at Paul Hamm's crotch as he bounds across the gymnastics floor.
But what to do if, say, something controversial — and this means more than your standard doping accusations — happens in Beijing? Like if an athlete starts carrying on about Tibet, or the Chinese authorities crack down on a human rights protest outside Olympic Village, or the Today show's license to broadcast live from Tiananmen Square suddenly gets revoked? You still going to abide by Business As Usual?
NBC News president Steve Capus insists, "If there’s news, we’re going to cover it."
This is funny. Not because we don't believe NBC News' crackteam of reporters will try to do their jobs as best they can, because they will.
Rather, look to corporate overlord GE, who has a lot riding on these Olympics games. And not just the $1 billion in ad revenue. CONTINUED »
Uh, somehow, allowing live broadcasts from around the Olympics in Beijing still hadn't been cleared with the Chinese government with not even a month to go before Michael Phelps hits the pool. Not to confuse you: The permissions had nothing to do with NBC's ability to broadcast from the actual sporting events; the billions of dollars in license fees it ponied up guaranteed the network that much. But if, say, Matt Lauer wanted to hop on over to Tiananmen Square to remind viewers, live, that the world's biggest athletic competition was this year taking place in the middle of a human rights debacle, NBC didn't yet have the go-ahead. Now they do. China has issued special licenses and frequencies for networks to shoot live from Tiananmen and other city locales, but not "cultural relics" like the Great Wall and Forbidden City.
Tommie Smith, the Olympic gold medalist who, along with fellow Olympian John Carlos, staged the Olympics’ most infamous political protest, the iconic image of which can be seen plastered on dorm room walls from coast to coast, has changed his tune about mixing politics and the Olympic Games. International disapproval of the Chinese government has led to numerous protests and threats of protests over the upcoming games in Beijing, but the former track and field medalist says athletes should focus on their events.
China has given the OK to 247 video-sharing sites to resume operations after shutting them down earlier this year. Curiously not making the cut? Tudou.com, Youku.com and, yes, 56.com. [Variety]
"China's YouTube," the website 56.com, has been offline since June 3, with this notice, which says something about a service upgrade, the only evidence it even existed. Some might point the government's regular crackdown on Internet content, which runs afoul of its standards policies, now extending to online video. Or maybe they're just getting a head start on keeping any unauthorized Olympics broadcasts off any site that isn't stamped with NBC's seal.
A corporation's rights, that is. A nation where online video piracy runs rampant (but where doesn't it?), China claims it'll begin cracking down on websites that offer pirated coverage of the Olympic games from NBC, which has exclusive broadcast rights. The network will implement "fingerprint" technology to make it easier to identify any content that was distributed illegally; Chinese officials can then go after the culprits. [BW] And … they could probably start with RedLasso.
In an effort to aid those who were affected by the May 12 earthquake in China, Northwest Airlines is asking customers to donate WorldPerks miles to The Salvation Army – which is "actively participating in the disaster relief efforts to help survivors who are suffering from the loss of their homes, belongings and loved ones" – and plans to match donations up to one million miles.
From Northwest's WorldPerks Terms of Service: "Award travel has no cash value and will not be refunded."
Way to pitch in, guys.
Already the Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair "scandal" has been defused by certain rational arguments, such as, "We see kids younger than Cyrus appear on film wearing fewer clothes and in more sexually compromising situations, and nobody is crying foul there." But nothing helps combat the idea that Cyrus's photo shoot is a non-issue like another still photograph — this one also of a Disney brand.
A Disney underwear brand. In China. That can be described as nothing more than a pedophile pinup.
How did something much more scandalous than a photograph of Cyrus' back get plastered on a billboard? For starters, the age of consent in California might be 18, but in China, where this billboard appeared, it's a mere 14. CONTINUED »
Angry that they're taking so much heat from activist groups for sponsoring the Olympics that's hosted in a Darfur-hating country, big name sponsors are fighting back against orgs like Mia Farrow's Dreams for Darfur.
That outfit issued a report card on 19 Olympics sponsors, awarding sixteen of them Ds or Fs. Giant corporations with billions and market value and shareholders with a tendency to bitch aren't taking it lightly.
Spits Coca-Cola: "For an organization that has not eased the suffering of a single individual on the ground in Darfur to criticize those who are helping thousands every day is more than ironic." Johnson & Johnson adds: "Given the complexities of the tragedy in Darfur, we are disappointed that Dream for Darfur has used such a narrow context by which to evaluate the company’s response." Fires off General Electric: "We commend Dream for Darfur for raising awareness of this tragic situation, however we strongly disagree with the organization’s approach as well as the use of the Olympic Games as a political platform and the assertions made in the report card." And also: CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
